Silence is Star-Like

Chapter Nine of Ten from my fic ‘silence is star-like’ (title taken from a Pablo Neruda poem). For Castle. Second person (Castle’s POV; the fic switches between his and Beckett’s with every chapter, with the final chapter, chapter ten, including both their POV). Just so you know.

Katherine Houghton Beckett is a beautifully complex woman, and you’re only just beginning to realise it.

Of course, you’d always known that she’s complex, and you’d always known that she’s beautiful. Those eyes- so wide and doleful and they just sucked you right into her own personal whirlwind until you couldn’t escape even if you wanted to- were the first things that you had noticed about her. You’re a little ashamed to admit it, but of course at first, it was how attractive she was more than anything. There was a story there and you knew it, but the way her long legs strut across the floor when she was pissed, all ruffled short hair and heaving chest, had been enough to distract you.

And complex- Oh, of course you’d known that. She didn’t make sense. She shouldn’t be a detective. Until you found out another layer, and then another, and another. She wasn’t as closed off as she had appeared to be before. She was a romantic. She was a comic book fan. She was drowning in her mother’s case. She was an enigma wrapped up in mystery compressed into high collars and stuffy suits.

But now this is how you learn that these two qualities are not mutually exclusive. She is beautifully complex. She breaks down in a parking lot because of the flash of a window. She tilts her head back when she laughs because of her PTSD, as though she is so free that it travels through her body, starting from her toes until her whole body is alight, ending with the half-kiss of her wind chime laughter.

Katherine Houghton Beckett is a beautifully complex woman and you are in love with her.

“Castle?”

You blink, see that she’s watching you over the top of a Patterson book, crinkling at the edges from her smile.

“Yeah?”

There’s a beat of silence, and then she’s tucking her knees beneath her, all Sunday morning domesticity and bright eyes.

“Hm. Nothin’.”

Katherine Houghton Beckett is a beautifully complex woman and you are in love with her and this is how:

Endlessly.

-

“Beckett! Beckett! I got it! I did it! Beckett!”

You jump and down on the spot, reeling in your line the way that Bill has been teaching you for the past hour, Kate sitting idly by her own line. She watches you with a smile, that way she’s been doing lately- Free of guilt. You notice it in her body, too, the way her shoulders are looser, the way her body curls into yours when she hugs you, warmth and beauty and complexity.

You bounce on the tips of your toes, struggling when the line begins to tug dangerously, ignoring the way that Kate laughs at you. You’ll show her. You can fish. It’s easy. It must be. It’s just you, a fish, and a line with bait on the end of it. It can’t be that hard.

“Well, it’s not like you’re doing any better.” You point out. “We’ve been sat here for twenty minutes and you’ve not even come close to catching anything, Beckett.”

Beckett hums calmly. It’s almost infuriating how self-confident she is.

“Fishing is a game of patience, Castle, if you hadn’t figured that out yet.”

“Oh, I can be patient.”

Her eyes flash up to yours, wide and doleful and as always, sucking you in, and then you are lost in the green and brown swirl, so lost that it becomes your home. She is everything.

“I know, Castle.” She murmurs quietly. “I know.”

The two of you turn silent, subtext thick and heavy in the air. And this is when your heart begins to pound in your ears, your hands sweating, because her eyes shift from sadness to anticipation in the space of her words. And you’ve forgotten why you’re waiting. The waiting is done. You are running together. Surely, now is the time to start your always?

“Kate, I-”

“Good luck next time, writer guy.” Bill interrupts loudly, startling you as he claps you on the shoulder, squeezing firmly. “Maybe Katie here will give you some tips.”

You scoff, quickly recovering from the interruption as Kate blushes, clearing her own throat. Huh. Had she been waiting for you to move your move, then and there?

“She’s even worse than me. I bet all the fish are under there, eating away at her bait, and she doesn’t even know.”

Kate glares at you as Bill laughs, eyes flashing dangerously.

“Just you wait, Castle.”

“Katie here has been kicking her Dad’s ass at fishing since she was eleven years old.” Bill tells you, grinning. “Learned from her Mom.”

You look at Kate, waiting for the inevitable sadness to cross her face, but it doesn’t. She just narrows her eyes at Bill.

“Mom only taught me because you and Dad were convinced it wasn’t something little girls should be doing. Maybe if you hadn’t been so ignorant about it, I wouldn’t have learned from the best and would’ve instead had measly helpings with you and Dad, and you might be better than me.”

Bill belly-laughs as she finishes, stepping forward to ruffle her hair. She laughs too, slapping him away light-heartedly. And all the time you are watching her, cataloguing how she scrunches her nose, the way the right corner or her lips quirks up first, the way she loves the few people she has in her life as though they are any more worthy than she is.

And when she turns away from Bill, catches you watching, she looks at you the way she looks at her coffee when you pass it to her over a dead body at four in the morning. Like you’re her constant. The way you’ve always wanted to be. A way that’s both new and familiar and has been there all along, you’ve only just noticed it.

Something traps in your lungs, but then she’s turning away, grabbing her rod and reeling in the line.

Suddenly, her line emerges from the water, sparkling with the reflection of the morning sun, with a fish on the end, and there is nothing but the way her laugh encompasses all there ever has been, the way your heart simultaneously contracts and explodes with the ferocity of your love for her.

Bill claps a hand on your shoulder again as Kate’s laughing and throwing smug insults over her shoulder.

“Do me a favour, son?”

You look at him, observing how seriously he’s watching you.

“Keep doin’ whatever it is you’re doin’ to make her laugh like that. She hasn’t laughed like that since her Mom got killed.”

Your throat closes, but the words I Love Her rise anyway.

-

Kate giggles, actually giggles, as you walk along the path back to her father’s cabin at midday.

“Oh, you should’ve seen your face, Castle.” She says, all smug and bright eyes and speaking enthusiastically with her hands. Alive. “I can’t believe you thought I couldn’t fish. I used to come here every summer as kid. I mean, c’mon, Castle.”

She looks up at you, ignoring the beautiful landscapes and the sound of the lapping water and everything that she has ever cherished, as though you could possibly provide her with more joy.

“Used to. Besides, I never would’ve pegged you for the fishing type. It’s not exactly gripping.”

Kate smiles, places her hands in her pockets. “I only learned so that I could teach them a lesson.”

“Ah. You’ve had that stubborn streak since a kid, huh?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

“And here I was thinking you were just playing hard to get.”

Kate’s smile splits you in two, gluing you back together again with that laughter, tipping her head back. You watch, resisting the urge to rest a hand on her lower back, to catch that tendril of hair escaping her bun and fluttering against her cheek, to swallow the pearl of her laughter with your lips and listen as it morphs into a moan.

Instead, she finishes her laughter and reaches out, tangling her fingers with yours. Your heart rises to your throat and you do not swallow it down. Let it speak.

“Nobody’s ever found my stubbornness cute before, Castle.”

“I write mystery novels for a living, Beckett. Surely you knew that I’m not attracted to anything normal.”

Kate raises her eyebrows at you. “Are you saying I’m not normal?”

Oh. Oh, she’s good. She even slackens her grip on your hand.

“Oh no, I am not answering that trick question. This is just like the ‘does my butt look good in this’ question.”

Kate tilts her head at you, puzzled. “How is that in any way similar?”

“Well, neither have an actual answer. If a guy answered with a yes, the woman would be insulted, and if they said no, then the woman would claim they’re lying.”

“So how does that link to my question?”

“Well, if I say yes, then you’ll be insulted. But if I say no, then I’ll be lying. Because you, Katherine Beckett, are not normal.” You pause, tongue working around your heart caught in your throat. “There is nothing even vaguely normal about you. You’re extraordinary. In every single sense. There are no words for you, no matter how hard I try, no matter how many times I try to show it in Nikki Heat. So… No, you’re not normal, and don’t you dare ever think you are.”

Finally. You can tell her. Out loud, not just a passing note in a dedication.

You haven’t realised that the pair of you have stopped until she’s standing in front of you, heart in her eyes, mouth slack.

Even just a few days ago, you would be apologising profusely for overstepping, for making her uncomfortable. But why should you? It’s true. She’s extraordinary. And she knows that you love her. She remembers. And that’s okay. So why would you ever pretend differently? Why would you be miles away from anything you’ve ever known, fingers tangled with hers, walking down a bumpy path that leads to a cabin that feels too much like home now if she meant anything less to you than love?

“Castle.” Her voice is raw, eyes wide, as though it’s the first word she’s ever spoken, the only thing she’s ever known.

You raise your hand to her face, finally tucking that tendril of hair behind her ear. She blushes beneath your touch, rosy cheeks the same colour as your furiously beating heart.

“I’m not sorry, Kate.” You tell her. “I will never apologise for the way I feel.”

Relief flickers across her face like an open flame, eyes fluttering with the weight of it. And then she’s smiling, smiling wider than you’ve ever known.

“For the record, Castle, you’re not exactly far short of not normal yourself.”

You feel it. The weight of all the things left unsaid that she’s not quite ready to say yet. These whisperings that suffocate her because she’s never learned how to communicate, and here, before you, for you, she is trying. She is reaching out for you, putting in the effort, diving in. Together.

“Kate…”

You’re stunned. There’s no other way to describe it.

“Castle?”

Kate pushes up on her toes, all enchantress eyes and supermodel body, so close to yours, lips brushing against your chin. This is your moment. And this is when she speaks the words against your skin as though she is confessing a secret, whispers quieter than silence and louder than your words: